The MassINC Polling GroupIndependence. Integrity. Impact.2015-07-29T17:16:44Zhttp://www.massincpolling.com/?feed=atomWordPressSteven Koczelahttp://massincpolling.comhttp://www.massincpolling.com/?p=20502015-07-29T17:16:44Z2015-07-28T17:52:18ZYou, the voters of Massachusetts, killed the Boston Olympic bid. You were the problem for Boston 2024 from the beginning. Political figures and opposition groups will surely claim and receive a measure of credit. But it was the public, persistently and consistently expressing skepticism through public opinion polls, on social media, and at community meetings that did in the bid.

The US Olympic Committee’s statements upon pulling the bid made this clear. “Notwithstanding the promise of the original vision for the bid, and the soundness of the plan developed under Steve Pagliuca, we have not been able to get a majority of the citizens of Boston to support hosting the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” USOC CEO Scott Blackmun told the Boston Globe. “Therefore, the USOC does not think that the level of support enjoyed by Boston’s bid would allow it to prevail over great bids from Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest, or Toronto.”

Public polling, at its most basic, is a way for citizens to speak to their leaders and to one another. Poll results include those who don’t put their opinions on Twitter and those who may not take the time to call their legislators or show up at a community meeting. And here, voters used their voices to tell the powers-that-would-be that they weren’t buying what Boston 2024 was selling. In a time when most parts of the political process are heavily weighted toward wealthy donors, Boston 2024 died at the doorstep of the everyday voter.

The USOC set various goals for public opinion and when they weren’t met, pulled the plug. The final straw may have been the reticence of Mayor Walsh and Governor Baker expressed over the last week. But make no mistake: if public support had been around 80 percent, leaders at all levels would likely be racing one another to the nearest podium to express any necessary measure of support for the Games.

Snow buries Bid 1.0

Instead, our six polls since January for WBUR showed support for the bid stuck in the 30s and 40s. In nearly every case since January, opponents outnumbered supporters. February’s massive snowfall, and the catastrophic failure of the MBTA to cope with it, threw a chill over Boston 2024 that showed little signs of melting well into summer. The T seems to have been decisive in stopping any early momentum in its tracks. Starting in February, T riders were consistently less enthusiastic than non-riders about the prospect of hosting the games.

The T could also have presented an opportunity for Boston 2024 to make its case for an Olympic legacy. Forty percent of Boston-area voters said that improvements to the aging transit system would have made them more likely to support hosting the games. But Boston 2024, boxed in by their claims that all the transportation projects needed for the games were already in the pipeline, was unable to convince the public that the Olympics would deliver significant transit benefits that would otherwise be missed.

The public funding question

Instead, the debate fell into an endless and largely inscrutable back and forth over who would pay for what and how much it would cost. Taxpayers fear that they would end up on the hook for overruns was significantly responsible for low public support. An April Suffolk poll showed a majority would support a privately-funded games. But the time spent to convince the public that they wouldn’t end up with the bill proved fruitless and even counterproductive.

Not only did the focus on the bottom line and cost overruns limit any discussion of legacy improvements, it just plain didn’t work. In fact, the more Boston 2024 talked about its privately financed vision, the less people believed it. In January, 53 percent thought that public funding would be required to host the games. In March, that figure had climbed to 65 percent. By July, seven in ten in the Boston area thought the public would be on the hook.

Unilateral disarming

Boston 2024’s seemingly ineffective communications efforts came at a heavy price, both in terms of consultant and executive salaries and political blowback. Voters in our March poll were split evenly as to whether they approved or disapprove of former Governor Deval Patrick’s paid role as an ambassador for Boston 2024. The handling of compensation issues, along with the reluctance to release the original Bid 1.0 in its entirety, cut into Boston 2024’s favorables, which were underwater from March onwards and finished at 26 percent in July. Boston 2024 expressly took off the table the idea of paid advertising at the critical moment, essentially locking in their low ratings.

With little effort in terms of communications to support it, Bid 2.0 landed like a tree in a distant forest. Most said they were paying little attention to it; three-fifths said its details would make no difference to their opinion on the bid. And while the idea of spreading out Olympic venues across the state had bare majority support, more were opposed to a key feature of the new plan: giving massive tax breaks to a developer to build a temporary Olympic stadium and related infrastructure at Widett Circle.

Still, going into last week’s TV debate between Boston 2024 and No Boston Olympics, around half of the public was undecided or open to changing their mind-plenty for Boston 2024 to put together a majority. But the debate focused on the mundane details of the issue the public feared most: public funding. With no strategy to change the subject, and no prospects of a strong campaign, it is difficult to see how Boston 2024 could have put out what had become a stinky, smoldering dumpster fire of discontent and distrust.

Though the office chairs are still warm at Boston 2024, talk has already moved to the USOC’s aim of resurrecting the Los Angeles bid for 2024. Most Americans hope they succeed. Nationally, 89 percent of Americans want to see the U.S. host the Olympics again. That figure drops nearly 30 points when residents are asked about their own area hosting the games. Still, that support level would have kept Boston in the running. Instead, the Olympics dream is over, and Boston-area voters need look no further than the bathroom mirror for whom to thank or blame.

Tomorrow night, Boston 2024 and No Boston Olympics will meet in a debate hosted by Fox25 and the Boston Globe. The stakes are high. This month’s WBUR poll shows support (42 percent) still trailing opposition (50 percent). The United States Olympic Committee, which decides in September whether to officially submit Boston as the US entrant for host city status, has said publicly they want to see support in the 50’s “relatively soon.” But the latest polls show the numbers aren’t clearly trending in any direction.

Here are four things to look for when the two sides square off tomorrow night.

Who is elevating whom and why? Don’t elevate a lesser opponent. This oft-repeated political advice could apply to either side here. The question for Boston 2024 is, why risk bringing the lowly, underfunded, ragtag opposition up to their level? And for No Boston Olympics: why not sit on high favorables and a so-far durable lead, instead of giving the bid team a chance to change their fortunes? The approach both sides take to the debate could offer clues into what each hopes to gain from it.

How does Boston 2024 look to win over opponents? Simply put, Olympic proponents have to change minds, not just win over undecided voters. To meet the USOC’s stated goal of support in the 50’s “relatively soon”, to win a referendum next year, and (eventually) to win as host city, some number of opponents will need to be persuaded to support the Games. Opposition is currently at 50 percent, and even higher among the older and whiter voters most likely to show up in a referendum. Boston 2024 has said they have no plans for an ad buy, which seems to ratchet up the pressure for appearances like this. Keep a close eye on what arguments Boston 2024 uses to appeal to skeptics.

Which side wins the debate on public funding, and how much time is spent on it? Despite months of assurances, 75 percent statewide still believe Massachusetts taxpayers will end up on the hook for the Games, an idea has been consistently unpopular. This is an opportunity for the “yes” side to explain their position on public funding, either to sell voters on the use of public money or try to persuade people that public funding won’t be needed after all. But campaigns are largely won or lost by what issues get the most attention. If the debate is all about who will owe what to whom and when, the “no” side certainly seems to come out ahead.

Does the USOC’s presence change the dynamic? The USOC is better liked than Boston 2024 in our most recent WBUR poll, giving them a measure of credibility in tomorrow’s debate. Their presence may be beneficial by allowing the pro-Olympics side to shift the conversation away from the daily back and forth over the mundane details that occupies so much media attention here. The USOC’s presence also reinforces the idea that they are working side-by-side with Boston 2024, rather than looking down critically and skeptically from their lofty perch.

On balance, it appears that Boston 2024 has more to prove, and more at stake. Despite conflicting messages from the USOC on target support levels, it certainly seems Boston 2024 needs to start peeling off some opponents and soon. It’s possible. Over a third (37 percent) of opponents say they are open to changing their mind, enough to meet any of the goals for support levels that the USOC or others have set. Tomorrow night will be a big test of whether Boston 2024 can do that.

THE CROSSTABS

2016 Update

Donald Trump is still soaring on an updraft of his own hot air. A new WaPo / ABC News poll gives him his largest lead yet. The poll was done mostly before the dustup over his remarks about John McCain’s service in Vietnam. The Trump surge may be coming to an end, with the last night of calling showing a major decline in the Donald’s support.

Support for Bernie Sanders grew in the same WaPo / ABC poll, but he still trails by 53 points.

In the first two voting states, the story is a bit more mixed. Jeb Bush has held at least a nominal lead in all New Hampshire polls since April, and Scott Walker continues to lead in Iowa, according to a poll from Monmouth University.

The Fox Debate cometh, with the promise of selecting the 10 participants in the main event via poll averages. But details are still sketchy on what polls will be included. And a few respondents in one or two polls could mean the difference between making the cut or not.

Hillary Clinton is looking weak in three key swing states. Her favorables are particularly problematic.

On Iran, Americans are supportive of the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear activities, but not that confident that it will succeed.

Miscellany

Over at WGBH, Mo Cunningham continues his periodic invective against political polling as little more than marketing-driven entertainment. But he pauses for a gracious acknowledgment of the WBUR poll and the importance of public opinion in the Boston2024 debate.

– – – – – – – – – – – #NerdAlert Tearline – – – – – – – – – – – –

Falling response rates make polling more expensive since it takes more calls to complete a single survey. But Pew’s Scott Keeter says low response rates don’t appear to make polls unreliable.

]]>0Steven Koczelahttp://massincpolling.comhttp://www.massincpolling.com/?p=20382015-07-08T16:47:19Z2015-07-08T16:47:19ZAmericans really want to host the 2024 Olympics. They want it more than they have in the past. They want it more than other countries do. They want it more than almost any country ever has. US cities were in the running for the Olympics twice in recent years, with 54 percent and 61 percent national support, respectively. This time around, a resounding 89 percent of Americans support the idea of the United State hosting the Games, according to an AP-Gfk poll conducted in June.

If this level of support holds (and is not an outlier), it’s not just higher than previous US bids. It’s higher than most other countries that have bid for the Olympics since the International Olympic Committee began publishing polls in prospective host nations. Since the 2008 games, there have been just two instances (both in China) where support for hosting the games exceeded 89 percent support.

American support also clocks in above any of the other countries with a city currently bidding for the Summer 2024 Games. Media polls show France with 73 percent support, leading Hungary and Germany, each with around 60 percent support.

Sky-high national support for bringing the games to the US may come as a bit of a surprise in Boston, the US bid for 2024 games, and where polls continue to show serious skepticism. Recent polls around Boston and across the state have shown support languishing in the low to mid-40s. Support has been so low that some speculated that the US Olympic Committee (USOC) would pull the plug on the Boston bid when they met last month.

The USOC stuck with the Boston bid, but USOC Chairman Larry Probst said he’d like to see public support over 50 percent “relatively soon” and “ultimately” hit 60 percent in favor. Notably, there have been no local polls conducted in other potential 2024 cities. So we don’t know for sure whether Boston’s hesitation is unique, or if naysayers in Paris and Rome will be just as vocal as Bostonians have been.

The GfK/AP poll suggests Boston 2024 might have a strong customer base for domestic sponsorships, which are expected to bring in $1.5 billion. But the poll comes with a few important caveats that help put the high support numbers in context. First, the poll didn’t zero in on the Boston bid; it asked about an American Olympiad generically, and then whether respondents would want the Games in their state or area. Support dropped as the questions hit closer to home. Three-quarters (75 percent) support an Olympics in their home state and three-fifths (61 percent) would want the Games in their own area. And just over half (56 percent) think “hosting the Olympics has usually been worth the cost for the local areas where they are played.”

This downward step-pattern in support levels ends up just about where Boston support was when the city was first chosen in January; just over half. At that time, the idea of a Boston Olympics was mostly theoretical, with little public awareness of the details of what hosting would entail. The people surveyed by AP-GfK were responding to a similar uninformed hypothetical – the idea of a local Olympics, untempered by months of tweets, FOIAs, op-eds, public forums, and conversations over the office Keurig machine.

It’s easier to get excited about a US Olympics somewhere else: it’s all of the patriotism with none of the responsibility.

Note: The AP-GfK poll was conducted among 1,005 respondents June 19-21, 2015. The margin of error for the total sample is +/- 3.0 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level

THE CROSSTABS

2016 update, with rankings

Top 10 lists are a dime a dozen, but the one Fox will announce for the first Republican debate on Aug. 6 matters a lot. An average of certain GOP primary polls will determine who makes the stage for the first GOP debate in August. A few candidates have polled consistently high enough to count on securing a ticket, but below that is a desperate, disorganized scramble such that the final list of participants may come down to little more than sampling error.

Donald Trump’s rise in the polls probably doesn’t signal long term viability as a candidate. But for now, he’s sucking up a lot of oxygen both in the news and on social media. He has insulted, offended, or threatened to sue a whole lot of people since he started running. Between that and lost business deals, he could easily wallpaper one of his extremely large and luxurious buildings with recent news articles about himself. In the social media arena, his impact is just as noticeable. The only candidate with better stats on announcement day was Hillary Clinton.

The final polls on the Greece referendum whiffed by nearly a 20-point margin. Sure, the Greeks had lots on their mind other than answering polls, like securing basic necessities. But this wasn’t the first time in the past year that the polling data has missed the mark. Nate Silver investigates what’s behind the trend.

SCOTUS aftermath

Same-sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states, and a majority of Americans support the idea. Public opinion on the issue has shifted remarkably quickly, both due to generational replacement and people changing their mind. When the question was first asked on the 1989 General Social survey, just 12 percent supported the idea, Nate Silver reports.

Republican Pollster Kristian S. Anderson’s new book is out. From the Amazon overview:

“The Selfie Vote introduces you to tech-savvy political consultants and shows you how these hip young pollsters and consultants are using data mining and social media to transform electoral politics-including tracking your purchasing history. Make some purchases at a high-end culinary store? Crave sushi? Your choices outside the ballot box can reveal how you might vote. And anyone interested in the future of politics should know where these cultural trends are heading.

…

Data-driven yet highly readable, The Selfie Vote busts established myths about campaigns and elections while offering insights about what’s ahead-and what it could mean for American politics and governance.”

We’re thinking if you read all the way to the bottom of this newsletter, you would probably like it.

BOSTON – July 1, 2015 – WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station, and The MassINC Polling Group (MPG) are pleased to announce the renewal of their partnership through June 2016. The WBUR Poll will continue to cover the most pressing political issues of the day, bringing Massachusetts public opinion to the center of the conversation. WBUR Poll results have been at the center of the conversation in recent months with groundbreaking polls on the Boston Olympic bid, the MBTA, and the Boston Marathon bombing trial.

MPG will conduct more WBUR Polls on the 2024 Boston Olympic bid through the host city election in 2017, or as long as Boston remains in contention. WBUR Olympic polls have been widely cited locally as well as by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other national and international news outlets. The WBUR Poll will also continue to cover issues at the center of the policy discussion in the Commonwealth and follow public opinion on the state’s key political leaders, especially in light of the upcoming presidential conventions.

“We share an ethos with WBUR,” said Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group. “Polling is a way to bring the public into conversations where their voices would otherwise not be heard. It’s a way for the public to share their opinions both with their leaders and with each other.”

“WBUR is committed to enterprising, substantive reporting on issues that affect the community,” said Richard Chacon, Executive Director of News Content, WBUR. “We believe that the data derived from the WBUR Polls helps bring clarity to complex news stories and how we report them.”

Since the partnership was formed in 2011, the WBUR Poll has produced more public polling in Massachusetts than any other outlet, covering both policy issues and elections. The last year of the partnership was marked by several notable successes. The WBUR weekly tracking poll, which ran from August to Election Day 2014, predicted the outcome of the governor’s race and Senate race within a percentage point of the official tally, the most accurate polling in both races. The polling was also the basis for Poll Vault, a pop-up vertical covering politics and polling during the height of the election cycle.

About The MassINC Polling Group (MPG): The MassINC Polling Group is a full-service opinion research company serving public, private, and social sector organizations. MPG started in Boston with a local and state-level focus and now serves a national client base. Although we have expanded our reach, we still conduct and release more public opinion research on Massachusetts than any other polling organization. Our president, Steve Koczela, has written extensively on public opinion and data analysis for both media and academic publications.

About 90.9 WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station: Founded in 1950, WBUR began broadcasting NPR programming in 1970, offering NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered along with local news programming. One of the nation’s most successful public radio stations today, WBUR produces national NPR programs On Point, Here & Now, Only A Game and Car Talk, as well as a local daily newsmagazine, Radio Boston. Located on Commonwealth Avenue at Boston University, WBUR has the largest radio newsroom in New England, dedicated to covering topics that matter in Boston and across the nation. The work produced at WBUR can be heard on 90.9 WBUR, Boston; 89.1 WBUH, Brewster, Cape Cod; and 92.7 WBUA, Martha’s Vineyard. Follow WBUR at www.wbur.org, or on Facebook and Twitter, @WBUR.

Governor Charlie Baker rolled out the findings and recommendations of his administration’s Opioid Addiction Working Group at a press conference on Monday. The Working Group’s 44-slide PowerPoint presentation offered a series of recommendations to address the opioid crisis such as new treatment beds, expanded use of Narcan, better data analysis, and closer coordination with prescribers of opiates, among many others.

Recent polls on the issue suggest the administration’s approach will find an appreciative public. Two recent Massachusetts polls support what the overdose data seems to show: opioids have emerged from the back alley and the back burner to become an issue of of widespread concern. Both WBUR and the Boston Globe polls show around 4 in 10 Massachusetts residents know someone who has recently struggled with painkiller or opiate addiction. The WBUR poll showed 83 percent see the problem as either a crisis or a major problem for the state.

The Baker administration’s public health-oriented approach is also likely to sit will with Bay State voters. A 2014

MassINC poll showed far more residents see drug use as a health problem (64 percent) than a crime (24 percent), and that large majorities think treatment is a better approach than enforcement. Overall, Massachusetts residents would like to see more focus on crime prevention and rehabilitation, and less on punishment, which squares with what the task force has proposed.

Inside the rings

The United States Olympic Committee has commissioned a poll of Boston residents about the city’s bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, the Boston Globe reports. The article described a fairly standard set of poll questions asked during the poll, which comports with a description we received from another poll participant.

The timing of this polling, coming just before the USOC’s June 30 meeting, is sure to fuel speculation about USOC’s motives for polling. Boston 2024 Rich Davey insists the polling is benign and that no ultimatum has been issued to move public support. Alan Abrahamson of Wire Sports would like to see USOC move the bid from Boston to Los Angeles, the faster the better.

If the USOC does stick with Boston, low polling numbers in Boston will not hinder the city’s progress through the International Olympic Committee bid process for a while. MPG’s Steve Koczela examined 20 years of IOC polling data and found polling plays only a very minor role early in the process of choosing a host city. And there is precedent for major polling gains – support for the Tokyo Olympics grew from 47 percent to 70 percent from their initial bid to IOC selection. Support doesn’t have to hit the gravity-defying levels either. Vancouver won the 2010 games with only 58 percent support. Public support matters in the short term for local political leaders trying to please their constituents. But if local officials stick with the bid, Boston 2024 has a long time to build their fan base.

On the international front, the competitive picture is becoming more clear. The French Olympic committee made it official yesterday that Paris is in the running. Parisians have been supportive of previous attempts to win the Games, and national polls show 73 percent support the Paris 2024 bid. Budapest also appears to be moving closer to a bid. If it materializes, it has the support of 64 percent of the Hungarian public.

THE CROSSTABS

2016 update

Our fellow Boston pollster Suffolk University polled the Democratic and Republican sides in New Hampshire, with some eye-popping results on both the Democratic and Republican side.

Bush’s announce-bounce is confirmed by the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, which finds him with 22 percent. Scott Walker (17 percent) and Marco Rubio (14 percent) round out the top three in that poll, which has the Donald with a single percentage point of support.

Chris Christie’s 2016 ambitions are complicated by a continuing nosedive in support back home. His approval rating his 30 percent this week, according to a Public Mind poll by Fairleigh Dickinson, down for a high of 77 percent post-Hurricane Sandy.Charleston

PPP is first out the gates with a poll following last week’s tragedy and finds support for gun restrictions and opposition to flying the Confederate flag at government buildings.

Americans are increasingly going mobile. Nearly half of American homes (45.4%) are wireless-only, according to a National Health Interview Survey. Huffpost also includes a link to a new study that blames a lack of cellphone polling for the underestimation of President Obama’s support in the 2012 election cycle. All MPG polls call cell phones, though doing so is far more expensive than landline calls, due to FCC restrictions. And the FCC seems poised to make it worse. Huffpollster explains why pollsters and market researchers are up in arms over new FCC adopts rules regarding telephone “autodialers.” Meant to crack down on unwanted telemarketing calls, the rules will make polling harder and more expensive.

We don’t take positions on much of anything. But on this one, we agree with FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who wrote “And the FCC probably ought to go back to policing “wardrobe malfunctions” and not making pollsters’ jobs any harder. Without accurate polling, government may end up losing its most powerful tool to know what the people who elect it really think.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article said London 2012 had 58 percent support for their bid. It has been corrected to Vancouver 2010.

]]>0Steven Koczelahttp://massincpolling.comhttp://www.massincpolling.com/?p=20222015-06-11T13:24:14Z2015-06-11T13:24:14ZOne of the figures in this morning’s WBUR poll suggest ed the tantalizing prospect of stronger support for the Olympics if the games were spread out across the state rather than clustered in Boston as originally proposed. Support in the poll (39 percent) started out trailing opposition (49 percent). But when poll respondents were told that “some have proposed spreading out the Olympic venues across Massachusetts,” support rose to 51 percent, 14 points higher than opposition. This is the first potentially promising polling news for the Olympics in quite a while.

A less centralized Games appears to be the vision for the so-called “Bid 2.0,” due out later this month. It was foreshadowed by the announcement that New Bedford would be the sailing venue. So does this poll show that Bid 2.0 will pull higher levels of support since voters say they are more likely to support a statewide Games? Possibly. But there are realities of polling to keep in mind before placing any bets.

First, the most reliable figure in any poll is the base support/oppose question, done at the beginning of a poll. It does not include any assumptions, and does not elevate any specific information in voters’ minds. Questions that follow the initial support/oppose question, while valid, are imperfect substitutes for future polling. The responses to these questions may not be predictive.

To see why this is so, let’s say the statewide venue plan in the new proposal turns out to appeal to voters. Overall support may move, or it may not. Voters have manystrong opinions about Olympic issues beyond where the events will be held. Asking about a specific issue such as the prospect of statewide venues elevates that issue in voters’ minds at that moment as a way of measuring its specific appeal. But all of the other factors are still there in voters’ minds and will play a role in how they answer future polls.

So while the idea of a statewide Games is appealing, it may or may not be a very important piece of information going forward. After Bid 2.0 is released, the initial support/oppose question will be posed to voters again-voters who may prioritize any number of factors other than the venue location.

There is a precedent that illustrates the hazard of over-interpreting hypothetical questions in Olympic polling. The initial polling for Boston 2024 was conducted by Kiley & Co. in April of 2014. A poll memo and slide deck from this poll were obtained via open records requests from Jonathan Cohn and kindly sent to us by Kyle Clauss of Boston Magazine. The poll memo was previously published by Boston2024, but the slide deck was not.

That poll started out with 48 percent support, but after hearing “brief background info,” support rose to 56 percent. As the poll progressed, “support increases steadily – up to 66% – as residents heard more information about a potential Boson-area Olympics,” said the memo. It turns out the information the poll used was not very predictive of how support would evolve. This is not a fault of the poll itself, just an illustration of the dangers of counting on knowing how the information environment will evolve.

Relying on anything other than the initial level of support can be a hazardous way of making predictions about support levels. Support may rise as a result of the statewide venue plan, but this is far from certain.

– Steve Koczela

THE CROSSTABS

2016 update

Fox News and CNN have said they plan to use each candidate’s standing in the polls to winnow the field for the GOP debates. CNN has made it clear how this averaging will work, Fox has not. FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten explains why this leaves the bottom of the top 10 uncertain.

Nationally, polls of GOP primary candidates show a tightly clustered group with no clear leader. The Gravis Marketing/Howie Carr poll finds Jeb Bush ahead with 21 percent of the vote in New Hampshire primary.

It seems Darth Vadar and the Terminator have better favorability ratings than most presidential candidates, writes WaPo’s Chris Ingraham. He warns us not to “take any of this too seriously.” We won’t, until it comes time for the Voldemort/Darth Vadar debate. That sounds serious.

Support for Obamacare continues to slide, per a new ABC News poll. But it’s complicated, and some parts of the law are very popular.

Polling rules of the road

Many poll calls are made with machines that then connect a live interviewer when a potential respondent answers the phone. Proposed FCC rules may change this,writes Politico’s Steve Shepherd, which could fundamentally alter the way telephone polling is conducted.

Nate Silver fires back at the FCC, writing in part, “And the FCC probably ought to go back to policing ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ and not making pollsters’ jobs any harder.” The whole piece is worth reading for his defense of the importance of survey research.

There was another event on poll data fabrication yesterday in Washington, DC. This was the third in the series, illustrating what appears to be growing recognition of the need to deal with the problem systematically.

]]>0Steven Koczelahttp://massincpolling.comhttp://www.massincpolling.com/?p=20072015-05-28T13:13:00Z2015-05-27T17:51:30ZLast week’s revelation that a widely cited political science paper was probably based on faked data has reverberated around the opinion research community. The paper, published in Science, purported to demonstrate that a conversation with a gay political canvasser could change views on same sex marriage.

The size and durability of the change in opinion had raised both hopes and eyebrows among LGBT activists, political organizers more generally, and political and social science researchers. The study was picked up by the popular media, including the NPR program This American Life.

It all came crashing down when another team of researchers attempted to replicate the study. They quickly concluded that the follow-up online surveys, which tracked changes in the opinions of voters who had been canvassed by gay or straight volunteers earlier in the experiment, had probably never happened. Faced with mounting evidence of fabrication, one of the co-authors has requested a retraction from Science. The New York Times wrote of the incident, “The case has shaken not only the community of political scientists but also public trust in the way the scientific establishment vets new findings.”

Data fabrication in surveys is not a new problem and is not confined to the data from one high-profile paper. Most efforts to detect fabrication focus on interviewer “curb-stoning”, which gets its name from interviewers filling in paper and pencil questionnaires, sometimes literally sitting on the curb, rather than going door-to-door to survey actual respondents. Even here, more work is needed. But the focus on interviewers as the source of fabrication has meant the survey research community has missed other threats and needs to catch up.

This recent episode demonstrates is that fabrication can happen anywhere along the chain of data collection, processing, and analysis. In this most recent case, a clever fabricator apparently copied an already existing dataset, altering it just enough to avoid detection, at least for a while. Another kind of apparent fabrication is familiar to those who follow political polling, where survey firms Research 2000 and Strategic Vision seemed to have falsified results of surveys during the 2008 presidential cycle.

These cases are different still from the issues that exist in difficult research environments, mostly overseas, where face-to-face surveys are conducted with paper and pencil. The dangers of conducting surveys in these places are real, and give rise to the temptation to take shortcuts by inventing data rather than collecting it. Fabrication in these environments is the subject of several forthcoming papers, including one of my own with several co-authors.

The threat domestically is, despite last week’s revelations, probably lower than elsewhere. But if this episode has shown anything, it’s that more attention is needed across the board and throughout the entire survey research process. I have been involved in a series of events on data fabrication that has been quietly unfolding over the last year, organized by a combination of statistical and survey research organizations. The revelations during the sessions have made one thing clear. We have a problem.

An article from 1946 frames the current issue well: “The [fabrication] problem must be solved if the opinion research technique is to preserve its status as a reliable tool of inquiry.” Sadly, this is as true today as it was then.

Fresh from the annual AAPOR conference, market researcher Annie Petit vents on how political and social science researchers are well behind her field in terms of adopting new ways of conducting surveys.

]]>0Steven Koczelahttp://massincpolling.comhttp://www.massincpolling.com/?p=20002015-05-15T14:02:01Z2015-05-15T13:57:08ZMPG’s Steve Koczela and Rich Parr wrote the paper below for the 2015 AAPOR conference.

Public polls and poll reporting use a variety of descriptors of party affiliation. Most common is party self-identification: asking respondents with which party they most identify. This is the only available method in most national polls, which cover states with no party registration. In states with party registration, pollsters use a mix of party self-identification and party registration, either self-reported or drawn from a list of registered voters used for sampling. The implications of each method for analysis are not well-understood.

Using data from five waves of the WBUR Tracking Poll on the 2014 Massachusetts General Election, we explore the differences among three methods of identifying voters’ political affiliations. Because the polls were conducted using lists of registered voters including party affiliation, we are able to compare self-reported and actual party registration, as well as party self-identification with actual registration.

We found that a substantial minority of voters misreport their own party registration, and many self-identify with a party with which they are not registered. Further, we find self-reported measures of partisanship create more polarized groups than do actual registration figures. People who say they identify with or are registered with a party are a more concentrated voting bloc than actual registered members of that party. Finally, our research supports those who cast a skeptical eye on the independence of independents. No matter how they are identified, most independents act more like partisans.

]]>0Steven Koczelahttp://massincpolling.comhttp://www.massincpolling.com/?p=19922015-05-13T17:47:31Z2015-05-13T17:47:31ZThe Pew Research Center is out with a major new study of religion in America, along with a nifty interactive tool to explore the data. With a staggering 35,000 respondents, there’s no shortage of ways to slice the data. Here in the Boston area, the story mirrors the national trend: The percentage of Christians are declining, and the share of Americans who are not affiliated with any religion is rising.

As the Boston Globe’s Crux notes, Catholicism is bearing more of the brunt of this decline than other denominations. Pew found that for every new member joining the church, 6.5 are leaving. This trend is playing out even in the traditionally Catholic Boston Metro Area, where unaffiliated now slightly outnumber Catholics. (Nonetheless, Boston and Massachusetts are still among the most Catholic areas in the nation.) And, as Crux points out, the demographics of the Catholics who remain are shifting: They are getting older but at the same time less white. Hispanics now comprise 41 percent of American Catholics.

These demographic changes have bearing on the political landscape as well. The identity and ideology of the “Catholic” voter is shifting. We looked at this issue back in 2012, during the U.S. Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren. Overall, Brown led Warren by 7 points among Catholic voters, while Warren led among the nonaffiliated voters. But much of that lead came from white, non-Hispanic Catholics — the traditional profile of a Massachusetts Catholic voter. As the demographics continue to shift, it will be harder and harder to pigeonhole and politick towards a typical “Catholic” voter, even in a state like Massachusetts.

Casino Votes in Massachusetts Breaking Along Income Lines

Yesterday, voters in Brockton approved a casino in the city by the narrowest of margins; yes beat out no by 143 voters, or 1 percent of the 14,000 votes cast. That 50 percent support is on the low end of the 50-55 percent range that MPG president Steve Koczela predicted based on how previous casino votes have correlated with household income, adjusted by the cost of living in the communities where they have been held.

We’ll update our prediction model and this chart with the Brockton results and see what it predicts for upcoming votes in New Bedford and Somerset.

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THE CROSSTABS

Stiff Upper Lip

The polls missed badly in the UK general elections last week, and the postmortems are flying fast and furious. HuffPost has a great summary with lots of navel gazing links.

Two national polls tell different stories for Hillary Clinton. The CBS/NYTimes poll saw Clinton’s favorable rating actually increase in the wake of stories about her family foundation. But the NBC/Wall Street Journal found Clinton’s unfavorables ticking up. Still, Clinton remains the only candidate tested that has a net favorable rating, and she wins in hypothetical match-ups against Republican hopefuls.

Steve will be presenting a paper drawn from our WBUR Tracking Poll during last year’s governor’s race. It’s about different ways of asking voters whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or independents, and how those responses differ from how voters are actually registered on the rolls.

]]>0Steven Koczelahttp://massincpolling.comhttp://www.massincpolling.com/?p=19802015-04-30T20:18:40Z2015-04-30T20:17:09ZOriginally published as the CommonWealth Magazine Backstory for April 30, 2015.

ONE OF THE MOST ALARMING figures to come out of Gov. Charlie Baker’s MBTA panel report earlier this month was 57. That’s the average number of working days that T employees miss each year, according to the panel’s analysis. The analysis also found that the absence rate across all positions at the T was 11 to 12 percent, twice the level reported at peer transit agencies and four times the rate of the transportation industry as a whole. The logical conclusion from the analysis is that the MBTA is staffed by shiftless malingerers, enabled by an ineffective management structure.

The problem with this conclusion is that none of the absenteeism numbers used in the report stand up to scrutiny. An analysis of the source documents for the panel’s report, supplemented by conversations with state transportation officials, including some who worked on the report, revealed errors of interpretation, comparison, and logic.

There does appear to be a problem of absenteeism at the T, but the report does little to clarify how serious it is. Instead, the report showcases alarming numbers without explaining how they were derived. The numbers were also leaked to the press in advance of the report’s release to generate maximum impact.

Let’s start with the 57 days-off figure. That number includes vacation days, holidays, even days spent at employee training sessions, all of which are scheduled in advance. Stripping out these scheduled absences leaves a total of 22.5 “unscheduled” days away from work. These unscheduled days off are the T’s real problem because it’s difficult to run a transit agency effectively with so many workers failing to show for work.

The T panel’s report said the average absence rate at the transit agency is 11 to 12 percent, meaning roughly a tenth of the workers fail to show up on any given day. In calculating that percentage, the panel divided the average number of unscheduled days away from work (22.5) by the average number of days T workers actually do show up at work (204). The calculation is puzzling. Absenteeism is normally calculated by dividing the average number of days workers are absent by the total number of work days in a year. The T’s “employee availability reports” list 261 work days in a year, meaning the calculation would be 22.5 divided by 261, or 8.67 percent. One could debate whether holidays and other types of scheduled days off should be removed from the 261 work day total, but it is clear that removed the unscheduled days off from the work day total is misleading and inflates the absenteeism rate.

As an illustration of why the T panel’s approach is suspect, suppose a worker played hooky for three full days in a period of 10 regular work days. Using a conventional absenteeism calculation, the absenteeism of that worker would be 30 percent (3 divided by 10). Using the T panel’s approach, the number of absent days is first subtracted from the total work days and then the calculation is performed. So instead of 3 days being divided by 10, the panel would divide 3 by 7, for an absenteeism rate of 43 percent. The effect of the T panel’s approach is to make each unscheduled day off more damaging than the previous, increasing the absence rate faster and faster.

MassDOT spokesman Michael Verseckes confirmed via email that the T panel calculated the absence rate by dividing unscheduled absences by the average number of days actually worked. He wrote that “the 11 percent figure is akin to a performance metric – what it represents is the ratio of employees’ unavailability for reasons that could be considered avoidable. As an average number over the course of a year, it amounts to 22.51 days per employee. But as a measurement, it separates out the days off that were specifically unscheduled, and divided by the total average number of days per year that employees are available to work.”

The T panel’s approach makes impossible any comparison to absenteeism figures outside of the MBTA. The T panel report compared the 11-12 percent MBTA absenteeism rate to rates of 5-6 percent at unspecified peer agencies and 3 percent for the transportation industry as a whole. Neither comparison is accurate.

The 3 percent figure is reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for the entire “transportation and warehousing” industry, which includes transit agencies but also air and water travel, trucking and warehouse operations, even sightseeing tours. A call to the BLS confirmed the agency does not track absenteeism for transit agencies alone. Given how enormous and diverse the larger category is, it’s hard to see what light it sheds when compared to a large urban transit agency such as the MBTA. The BLS method for calculating absenteeism is also different than what is used by the MBTA.

The T panel report said “peer agencies have reported absence rates of 5-6 percent,” or twice the level the panel found at the MBTA. But the T and the peer agencies cited don’t calculate absenteeism the same way, a fact which is not noted in the report.

In phone calls and emails, state transportation officials said absenteeism figures for other peer transit agencies are hard to come by because most transit agencies are reluctant to publicize how many days their workers miss. One official who worked on the T panel report supplied documents or press releases on absenteeism from three other transit agencies. One was a 2006 audit of the Washington, DC, Metro system that relied on 2004 data. The audit cited an absenteeism rate of 5 percent. A 2013 press release from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) said the agency had reduced absenteeism from 7 percent to 5 percent. The third document supplied by the T panel, a report on overtime costs at New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, includes no concrete information on absenteeism.

The Metro in Washington calculates absenteeism using fewer types of days off than the MBTA. Calculating the MBTA rate of absenteeism using the same types of leave as the Washington Metro system yields a rate of 5-6 percent, depending on what number is used for total work days. Officials from the CTA did not respond to requests for information on how their absenteeism rate is calculated, which is also not explained in the CTA press release cited by Massachusetts transportation officials.

In responding to concerns about the T panel’s absenteeism numbers, state transportation officials acknowledged the report was done quickly under a tight deadline. One official called it a “rapid diagnostic” and said its data and conclusions would have to be examined more closely by the proposed MBTA fiscal and management control board, if it is approved by the Legislature.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the actual absenteeism data does appear alarming. Employees on average miss 22.5 days of work per year due to unscheduled absences. Use of the Family Medical Leave Act varies widely by employee category, suggesting that there may be some instances where it is being abused. These are areas where MBTA management could and should do more, regardless of the outcome of the governor’s reform legislation. The CTA was able to curtail absenteeism through better management, and the same could perhaps be done at the MBTA.

There are decadesofacademicresearchexploring why transit workers miss so much work, and manynewsarticles from across the country spelling out the impacts of high absenteeism to systems everywhere. This is not a problem unique to the MBTA. The question is, how much of a problem is it for the MBTA, and how much time and effort should be sent addressing it? The report offers little insight into this crucial question.

Steve Koczela is the president of the MassINC Polling Group, which is owned by MassINC, the publisher of CommonWealth magazine.